Now Playing: Remember Dave Pear at Yahoo Sports
Topic: Health & Science
Read Pain and regret, By Jason Cole, Yahoo! Sports September 18, 2007
KING COUNTY, Wash. – Dave Pear's speech is halting and he stumbles through his thoughts even though he has a spiral-bound binder of notes in his hands to prompt him. He repeats himself at times and gets frazzled with a brain that simply won't cooperate after too many concussions from his days on the football field. But there is one thing that can't be stopped as the 54-year-old Pear grapples with a life stunted by a game that has crossed the thin line from love of his youth to loathe of his middle age.
Frankly I do not remember Dave Pear who played in the NFL from 1975-1980. But then, now that I'm past 60 with back, knee and joint pain that is never far away, don't think I won't recall Dave Pear from time to time and thank fate that I never realized my teenage dreams of playing pro-football.
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"The NFL destroys families," Pear said. "I wish I had never played." Those 10 words, combined with the fact Pear wouldn't let his now-adult son play football, speak volumes from a far-reaching two-hour interview at Pear's home. It's a pretty house in the foothills overlooking Lake Washington in the suburbs of Seattle, the kind of place where anyone would be happy to retire.Don't quite think the salaries of the late 70's compare to what's out there to be earned today. But the head-knocking and roar of the crowd at a really vicious collision or sack takes on new meaning ... if you remember Dave Pear.
The Pears are selling, downsizing in hopes of dealing with mounting medical bills to treat Pear's back and neck problems. Next to the reclining chair Pear sits in during the interview, while struggling to look comfortable all the while, there's a baking dish full of different medications.
Provigil, Neurontin, Lamictel, Trileptal, Baclofen, Vicodin and Ibuprofen are part of an alphabet soup of medications no one would dare sample if they weren't required. Depending on the time of day, Pear takes one pill to keep focused, another to calm him down and a bunch of them to keep the pain at bay.
There's also a list with the meds, laying out a regimen Pear must follow eight times a day as he swallows 38 pills a day. Even with samples that his doctors give him to defray the costs, the bill for the medications comes to approximately $1,000 per month.
Moreover, one doctor told Pear that in order for him to get the first of two hip replacement surgeries he will need soon, he must quit taking the Vicodin, which happens to be the best pain reliever. Unfortunately, the Vicodin has a side effect of interfering with the healing after joint replacements, Pear said.
With more medical bills to come, downsizing commences even as Heidi works two jobs. She teaches aerobics part-time while also maintaining a sales job. The flexibility allows her to tend to her husband as much as possible as he goes from one doctor's appointment to another.
I work in the DSHS office in northern Pacific County. I recall around 2000 or 2001 interviewing someone I assumed to be just a big ole wounded adult male whose name I recognized as the same as that of a former Oakland Raider I remembered (long time football fan that I am.)
But it wasn't a coincidence with identical names.
It was the real guy, a man who spoke of the Raiders of the 70's with recollections loaded with longing, smiles and tears. He casually dropped the names of Raiders I had not thought of in years: Lyle Alzado, Ben Davidson, John Madden, Ted Hendricks to name a few.
But this former Raider was never a celebrity; still somewhat a big guy, but not as much bigger than me as he was when he was a gladiator.
Now, he was just passing through the area and wanted to ask about whether or not he would be eligible for medical coverage and food assistance. He was in pain, weak as hell and floating in and out of control of his fragile weeping.
And that was the first time I was glad and no longer embarrassed that although I could throw a mean spiral in high school, I was nowhere near being able to play even college football.
In the late 1990s, he [Pear] risked a large portion of his wife's inheritance on high-risk stocks that crashed. He also took his pension at 45 (the NFL Players Association no longer allows that) to defray costs. The pension doesn't go very far.
"My pension is a car payment," said Pear, who receives $484 per month from his six-year NFL stint (1975-80) with the Baltimore Colts, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders.
The problem is that under federal law, someone who takes pension early is no longer allowed to get disability. That decision has potentially cost Pear hundreds of thousands of dollars because the disability benefit is so much greater than his pension.
Pear said he was duped into taking his pension rather than continuing to wait for disability. The NFLPA flatly denies that, but Pear emotionally contends otherwise. "They cheated me and my family out of more than $1 million in disability payments we should have received over the years," Pear said.
"The law makes it so that you can't double dip," said Miki Yaras-Davis, director of benefits for the NFL Players Association.
"I got involved in this because I wanted to help people. That's what we're trying to do, but there's a limit to what the law will allow me to do based on the decisions that people make." The other issue for players such as Pear is that until recently, when the NFL and the NFLPA agreed to use the Social Security standard for disability to determine who gets benefits, the standard seemed unduly high.
Read the entire article at Yahoo Sports At your next Saturday afternoon pork out or Monday night gathering, sip a few and chomp a cheeto for and on behalf of gladiators who mostly have little idea of what awaits them in a world of big hits and small returns.
